My IQ has been increasing year by year.

Chapter 286 See you tonight

The old professor on the stage casually tossed the remaining small piece of chalk into the chalk trough under the blackboard.

He did not summarize the lecture, which lasted for more than two hours, nor did he ask if anyone in the audience had not understood it.

He didn't even erase the blackboard. He walked straight to the lectern, picked up his mug, pushed open the small door on the side of the lectern, and walked out on his own.

There was a two-second silence in the conference room, followed by the sound of people packing up and getting up.

No one complained about the professor's abrupt departure; the physics department seemed to have long been accustomed to this kind of behavior.

Several students in the front row stood up, stuffing their scattered draft papers into their bags while still arguing about the last unsolved parameter on the blackboard. People in the back rows gradually stood up and walked out along the staircase.

The light blue grid lines on Chen Zhuo's notebook were covered by black handwriting.

Black dots representing manifold fragments and lines representing algebraic mappings construct a somewhat complex network on these two pages.

Chen Zhuo's gaze fell on the very center of this network.

That's where the physicist just forcibly erased the singularity on the blackboard with a blackboard eraser.

On Chen Zhuo's notebook, that position was replaced by a multidimensional matrix.

He looked at the matrix and gently exhaled.

This is not proof.

Chen Zhuo knew very well what was going on.

If you showed this to anyone who does pure mathematics, they would most likely frown.

Because from beginning to end, he did not prove whether the matrix could converge back to the original topological structure perfectly when taking the limit.

He simply borrowed the physicist's blackboard eraser, forcibly shredded the unsolvable continuous space, and then barely connected these fragments with algebraic symbols.

It's full of physical intuition, and there are logical leaps everywhere.

But this is indeed an architecture that can bypass massive computational demands.

A rough, even somewhat shaky, sketch.

Chen Zhuo reached out and picked up the pen that was placed to the side.

He didn't add any more symbols to the paper. He capped the pen, then reached out and closed the thick notebook, sealing all the rough grids and matrices inside.

Chen Zhu packed his things and followed the small groups of people down the corridor.

"List?"

A voice, tinged with uncertainty and surprise, came from around the corner not far down the corridor.

Chen Zhuo stopped and looked up.

A young white man walked towards us.

He was still wearing the same wrinkled gray-blue sweater as yesterday, and the thick loose-leaf notebook was still tucked under his arm.

It's David.

Chen Zhuo looked at the other person, a smile appearing on his face, and nodded to him.

"David".

David strode over, his gaze sweeping over Chen Zhuo before finally settling on the orange and black Princeton pass on his chest.

In this red-brick building filled with experimental equipment and physicists, the sign for the mathematics department seems out of place.

"You didn't go to the science center today?"

David stopped in front of Chen Zhuo, raised his eyebrows, and said with obvious surprise in his tone.

"I thought you'd be spending these last couple of days in the math department before you left, so why are you here in the physics department?"

He glanced in the direction of the conference room Chen Zhuo had come out of.

"And you're just going to listen to those old guys who do string theory bragging?"

David laughed and shook his head.

"I was working on data in the lab downstairs just now, and I overheard the people upstairs saying that today's topic is spacetime evolution, which is not something easy to digest."

"Professor Pierre recommended me to come here."

"Pierre?"

David paused for a moment, clearly familiar with the name.

"Your teacher? He's the one who got you into the physics department?"

"Um."

Chen Zhuo nodded.

"My teacher asked me to come and see how string theory deals with spacetime topology. Maybe it will inspire my research."

Upon hearing this, David's expression shifted from astonishment to confusion, then to something else, and finally to a look of sudden realization.

He also studied geometry, so he naturally knew the rigor required when dealing with singularities.

He was also well aware of how simplistic and crude physicists were when faced with the same problem.

"So that's how it is."

David moved the loose-leaf notebook that was tucked under his arm to the other side.

"So how did you feel? When you saw them erase the singularity with a blackboard eraser, didn't you pure mathematicians find it particularly absurd?"

Chen Zhuo recalled the scene in the conference room just now and smiled slightly.

"That's quite direct."

Chen Zhuo looked at David and, instead of belittling physics, truthfully expressed his feelings.

"However, the idea of ​​directly breaking down a continuous space into a grid is indeed very useful. I tried applying it to their discrete model."

The two did not stand in the middle of the aisle. David raised his chin, indicating that they should talk as they walked.

Chen Zhuo followed him toward the stairwell.

"Did you apply the grid theory of string theory?"

David walked beside Chen Zhuo, turning his head to look at him. As a postdoctoral fellow who had been working on the front lines for many years, David had a very sharp academic intuition.

He had heard Chen Zhuo mention yesterday that they were going to revert to discrete lattice points, and today Chen Zhuo came to listen to a lecture from the physics department. Combining these two things, David immediately realized what was going on.

David's gaze fell on the backpack that Chen Zhuo was carrying.

"Your discrete model..."

David's tone became more serious.

"Is the framework complete?"

Chen Zhuo walked down the stairs.

He made no attempt to hide it, nor did he display the blind self-confidence often found in geniuses.

"The framework is in place."

Chen Zhuo nodded.

Before David could even show a look of surprise, Chen Zhuo added another sentence, his tone very objective.

"But this can only be considered a preliminary sketch at the moment."

Chen Zhuo looked at the wall at the corner of the stairs and calmly pointed out the fatal flaw in his own framework.

"I didn't do a rigorous mathematical proof for the convergence conditions in the middle. I skipped over them all based on physical intuition. In order to first build up the framework, I borrowed a lot of unreasonable bricks from the physics department."

David listened quietly without interrupting.

"If we follow my teachers' review standards..."

Chen Zhuo turned his head, looked at David, and smiled self-deprecatingly.

"If I were to show this notebook to Professor Pierre or the senior professors at the science center, they would immediately reject all the unproven limit derivations and demand that it be rewritten."

David looked at the smile on Chen Zhuo's face and listened to his unusually clear self-analysis, and couldn't help but laugh out loud.

He felt that the fourteen-year-old boy in front of him was completely different from the arrogant geniuses of legend.

"The old men in the math department have absolutely zero tolerance for skipping steps."

David sighed, deeply agreeing.

"Yesterday in the lecture hall, Professor Zhu was almost stumped by the academicians in the first row because he skipped a few derivation steps. Those people can't tolerate the slightest mistake."

The two walked down the stairs and arrived at the lobby on the first floor of Jefferson Laboratory.

Outside the glass doors of the lobby, the Boston afternoon sun shone on the steps, and a gust of wind blew, swirling up a few withered yellow leaves.

David pushed open the glass door and looked back at Chen Zhuo.

"but."

David's tone changed slightly, taking on a touch of the casualness and unruliness of a young scholar.

"We don't care about that."

Chen Zhuo followed him out the door, stood on the steps, and felt the cool breeze blowing in his face.

He looked at David with some confusion.

David raised his hand and looked at the watch on his wrist.

"Eight o'clock in the evening."

David looked up and met Chen Zhuo's eyes.

"About two blocks from MIT, there's a little bar called Rusty Nails."

Chen Zhuo listened quietly without interrupting him.

"A few of us physicists, computer topology algorithm developers, and postdocs like me who study geometry often go there to drink and chat in the evenings."

David put his hands in his pockets.

"The place was so-so, a bit noisy, but on the innermost wall of the tavern, there were two blackboards that no one paid attention to."

David looked at the notebook Chen Zhuo was holding.

"The older professors can't stand your sketches full of jumps and skips, but we don't care."

David smiled.

"We usually draw all sorts of unproven wild ideas on the blackboard when we're there."

David paused, his casual expression vanishing as he adopted a serious one.

"Chen Zhuo".

David called his name.

"Should we bring along those flawed sketches of yours?"

Chen Zhuo looked at David.

"Since it's a framework built with bricks borrowed from the physics department, why don't we, a bunch of roughnecks who aren't particular about rigor, help you see if this grid architecture can run?"

David's eyes held a simple curiosity.

"Physical intuition, combined with computer algorithmic approximation, might help you find a workable path through those skipped steps."

Occasionally, students riding bicycles speed past on the campus path below the steps.

Chen Zhuo stood still.

David's invitation was informal, even a bit rough around the edges.

A testing ground where mathematical fastidiousness is no longer a concern.

A group of young minds who can tolerate vulnerabilities and only value the rationality of the architecture.

This is good.

Chen Zhuo didn't think for long before nodding slightly.

"it is good."

Chen Zhuo's voice was not loud, but it was crisp.

See you tonight.

David's smile widened.

He pulled his hand out of his pocket and waved at Chen Zhuo.

"See you tonight, and don't forget your notebook."